Max safe temp for hard drives?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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owbert
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Post by owbert » Mon Apr 20, 2009 8:27 pm

what program would be recommended to benchmark/stress test a new HD to see if it is free from any initial manufacturer defects?

MikeC
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Post by MikeC » Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:11 am

HD Tune works -- so do the utilities offered by most drive makers themselves.

owbert
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Post by owbert » Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:20 am

MikeC, thank you very much.

offtopic: in about a week or two i hope to have finished my project of lowering the noise of my computer, and when i am done i will report back with a write-up (with photos!) of my journey .

without a doubt everyone here at spcr have been patient and receptive!

new2spcr
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Post by new2spcr » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:15 am

owbert wrote:what program would be recommended to benchmark/stress test a new HD to see if it is free from any initial manufacturer defects?
I prefer running a boot-cd but I don't know how reliable the manufacturer's software is though.

new2spcr
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Post by new2spcr » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:17 am

FrankDC wrote:I worked in a server qualification lab for a few years, and the upper limit for our hard drives was 40C. Anything higher, even under extended stress testing would fail qualification. Our drive designers said anything over 40C will shorten the lifespan of any hard drive.
I would agree. Maximum 40 degrees C is what I feel comfortable with. But I've seen many drives running hotter than that with no problems either short-term or long-term.

new2spcr
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Post by new2spcr » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:20 am

Aris wrote:
sneaker wrote: I believe the 55 degree figure you're referring to is a non-operating environmental temp limit, not a drive temp one.
No, i looked it up. Its the rated operating thermal limit. Non-operating thermal limit was much higher, somewhere around 70c.

This entire thread though really only matters to 3.5" drives. You almost never run into thermal issues with 2.5" drives. As the industry slowly continues to move towards the 2.5" form factor this entire thread will lose its meaningfulness. Especially when you consider that SSD's which aren't even made in the 3.5" form factor are projected to supercede HDD's within the next 5 years.

My Samsung 2.5 drive runs +50 degrees C so I use a notebook cooler all year around. I've never had any performance issues or otherwise due to high temperature though. But longevity is probably severely affected.

wasserware
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Post by wasserware » Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:00 am

I have been running my seagate 7200.12 at 45C for about 1 year without any ill effect in my passive HTPC

sandman7777
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Re: Max safe temp for hard drives?

Post by sandman7777 » Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:26 pm

Mine run 24/7 4 drives range in temp from 29c to 34c with case inside temp at 24.1c with Media Center running and surfing, naturally in summer temps go up, but i will adjust the case fans to some extent to compensate for increase for temp increase. Drives are all WD Black Editions . P-182 case.

Plekto
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Re: Max safe temp for hard drives?

Post by Plekto » Sat Mar 05, 2011 7:11 pm

Heat is a huge deal. So much so that I have my drives mounted in the three 3.5 inch slots in the front with the center drive bay empty and the cover off entirely. That's my intake. I can touch the drives and they aren't even warm to the touch. The same drives without air flowing over them almost singe my fingers. Also, by funneling a good 30cfm or so in negative pressure through a small opening, it creates an accelerated jet of air that's virtually identical to what a slower speed fan would do. I can put my fingers in the opening and feel noticeably colder air rushing past due to this effect.

I went from drives dying every 1-1.5 years to not at all so far, and it's been 3 years that I've been running this raid array.

tim851
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Re: Max safe temp for hard drives?

Post by tim851 » Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:06 pm

Is this even a debateworthy topic anymore?

From Google's study, which was the largest of its kind (at least when they conducted it):
One of our key findings has been the lack of a consistent pattern of higher failure rates for higher temperature drives or for those drives at higher utilization levels.
This is not a religious topic, where people can just imagine the truthiness.

nutball
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Re: Max safe temp for hard drives?

Post by nutball » Sun Mar 06, 2011 6:20 am

tim851 wrote:This is not a religious topic, where people can just imagine the truthiness.
Problem is that the evidence contradicts the "gut feel". So people tend to choose to ignore the evidence, and will go to great lengths to come up with reasons why the evidence is wrong, the Google study is flawed, etc.

Plekto
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Re: Max safe temp for hard drives?

Post by Plekto » Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:51 pm

I do know that in the past I had Maxtor drives, and they were known to be horribly unreliable. Yet running a fan over them resulted in 10+ years and half a dozen systems that I used them in and not one failure.

If it's too hot to touch, it needs cooling.

Mr Spocko
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Re: Max safe temp for hard drives?

Post by Mr Spocko » Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:27 pm

Maxtor well let's just say I saw too many dead ones but a few oldies that were still plugging away ;-) I never bought a Maxtor and now I avoid Seagate as well.
I note on the Hitachi models I just got they say max operating temp of 60 degrees celcius I would not get even a bit concerned until temps hit up to 50 degrees and they barely go above 40 even on heavy use. I have 2 Samsungs from 2004 with heavy use and they were at around 45/46 degrees in the Sonata case with no front fan.

Makers specify operating temps so I would be guided by that. Note some models have breather holes on top not to cover those up!

Telstar
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Re: Max safe temp for hard drives?

Post by Telstar » Fri Oct 03, 2014 6:14 pm

I feel it matters, but no idea of the recommended max temp. Not cramping the cages or putting a fan on the drives is the best we can do. I change my storage drives way before end of life, because even if they dont fail, they start to get compromised with bad sectors, and the likes.
Sadly my "Not perfect-rate" after 3 years is over 50%.
Mechanical HDD are the most failure prone component in any computer, period.

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